Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Ranking behaviour

What a strange inconsistent lot we are. Whilst I don’t care for ranking the seriousness of a criminal offence, I am forced to this position with rumours that the Prime Minister wants to drop the 50% discount on sentencing altogether, as opposed to Kenneth Clarke and Nick Clegg who are prepared to exclude sexual offences from any discount. It seems Ed Miliband and various other apparatchiks, in another unholy alliance with our less salubrious members of the press, have made a good fist at trying to wreck this piece of progressive reform.

Yet I am unsure whether to praise Ken and Nick for trying to at least get a part measure accepted, or the Prime Minister in the unlikely hope that his stand was based on a refusal to indulge the often politically-motivated outrage generated. No single person is wholly good or wholly bad, and monstrous crimes should not blind us to the possibility that any one person can be rehabilitated. That it often fails is not the point; that it can succeed is our hope. What greater hope for an enlightened society?